


Heroes (Just for One Day)

by roane



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bravery, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Gen, Headcanon, Heroism, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 14:25:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1651907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roane/pseuds/roane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"When he got handpicked to work on Project Insight, it was one of the best days of his life." A little background on the guy who heard Captain America tell him the price of freedom was high, and was prepared to pay it even though he was terrified.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heroes (Just for One Day)

Before that day, he was proud of his job. He was one of the good guys, he told people. When he got handpicked to work on Project Insight, it was one of the best days of his life. He didn’t question the ethics of targeting threats vs. actual criminals. He ignored the questions about due process. He was one of the good guys, working for the good guys.

It all changed the day Captain America went rogue.

If it had been anybody else, maybe it wouldn’t have affected him so much. But _Captain America_. His grandfather had been liberated from Auschwitz by Cap and his men; it was a story his grandfather had told him so often, he could recite it himself. He knew about the human side of the superhero. He heard how Cap and his men--men who had seen the darkest, hardest side of the war--had gone pale and silent at what they’d found, then swallowed it down and did everything they could for the survivors.

He used to joke to his mother that if they’d been a Catholic family, Captain America would have been a household saint.

When Steve Rogers came out of the ice, well, he could only imagine it was close to what the second coming of Christ might feel like to someone else. So the notion that Cap was now one of the bad guys? It didn’t compute.

Still, what he could do? He wasn’t much more than a desk jockey, top secret clearance or no. So he went about his job and silently cheered Cap on.

Then came the moment he heard it over the intercom: the Captain himself. Telling him that the work he’d been so proud of was for the same guys who’d tortured and starved his grandfather. Telling him it was his duty to resist, to stop the launch. He sat and stared at the screen in front of him awaiting his commands, and tried to think if there was some way he could sabotage the entire thing from where he was.

He knew who Brock Rumlow was. He didn’t have to turn around to see who was giving him orders, or what those orders meant. He took his hands away from the keyboard.

“I’m not going to launch those ships. Captain’s orders.”

“The price of freedom is high.” That’s what Cap had said.

He was shaking, but he was going to pay it. He owed his grandfather no less.

He can’t remember now what happened after that. He remembers the bite of the gun at his head, he remembers shouting and weapons being drawn, but he doesn’t remember exactly how he survived.

The next thing he remembers is sitting in the back of an ambulance while someone treated him for shock.

Now he’s home, and he’s a little lost. He doesn’t know what comes next. He still has nightmares of a gun pressed to the back of his head, bile rising in the back of his throat and his bladder about to let go. It’s just as well SHIELD was dissolved--he wouldn’t have been able to stay. He can’t even sit in front of his laptop at home without feeling a tightness in his chest.

There’s a knock at his apartment door. His heart starts thudding painfully. Should he answer it? Suddenly, irrationally, he’s convinced it’s Rumlow out there, although Rumlow probably died when the Triskelion fell. Rumlow, back to finish the job.

When he looks through the peephole though, he sees an entirely different dead man. The sunglasses might fool a casual observer, but not him.

“I’m looking for a few good SHIELD agents to help me,” Nick Fury says, when the door opens. “And I hear you’re one of the best.”


End file.
